With Haiti on Our Minds

Dear Friends,

An odd thing happened the other day while Allen & I were shopping for the different parts of the kits for Church World Service to go to Haiti.

As we shopped to complete a baby kit, we found everything we needed at a store, including good old-fashioned cloth diapers, except we couldn’t find diaper pins.  When I asked an employee, we found out that they no longer sell diaper pins.

I wanted to press her on the logic behind selling cloth diapers but not diaper pins, but thought better of it since it certainly wasn’t her decision about what the store carries.  Fortunately, we found another store that did carry diaper pins and our kit was complete.

But for a moment, the plight of some family in Haiti rested on whether we in California could find diaper pins.  Church World Service is very specific about what is contained in their kits and without those pins there would be no kit.  If we hadn’t searched harder to find those pins, there would be no kit.  No baby clothes and blankets and other infant necessities for someone recovering from the rubble of an earthquake-shattered life.

And so it is.  Our actions affect the life of someone half a world away.  Most of the time it isn’t that stark a connection perhaps, but often it can be.  The choices I make at the supermarket…where I get my hair cut…whether I leave a light on or not…each of these actions and a myriad of others have the potential of greatly affecting the lives of people I don’t know and will likely never meet.

Sometimes the decisions are pretty clear in their effect.  Often times they are not.  We do what we do and never really think about it.

But that’s the whole idea of community; that’s the idea of connection.  And with God, through God, we are connected to all of creation, including our brothers and sisters who are digging out in a country I’ve never even been near.

We are connected to those hundreds and thousands of miles away.  We should make sure we act like it.

PS--If you'd like to read a great blog from Haiti, read this one from the Global Ministries Missionaries to Haiti: http://kimandpatrick.blogspot.com.

PPS--If you're interested in creating your own kit to send to Church World Service, here are the instructions on how to do so.